Monday, April 25, 2016

Julietta Blogs: My Interview with Mitali Perkins

BACT Blogger Julietta had the opportunity to interview Mitali Perkins, author of the book Rickshaw Girl, at the show's San Francisco opening! She shares her experience below!

---

The Rickshaw Girl play was super cool! It is about a girl
named Naima. She wants to help her dad get some rest while still making
enough money to pay back a loan for buying a new rickshaw, so she tries
to drive the rickshaw. Instead, she crashed it. It will be very hard to
fix such a beaten up Rickshaw, but if they don't fix it, her dad won't
get any business with it.

A rickshaw built by actors with props!

I liked the book because it inspires girls to help them
know that they can do anything. I liked how Naima's passion for art
turned out to not be useless, but very important for her family. In the
stories beginning, Naima really likes art, but she thinks because she
cannot help make money, she is useless for the family. At the end, she
realizes that it is a good thing that she was a girl, or else she would
have not been given a chance to paint Rickshaws in exchange for the
repairs of her dads Rickshaw.

To bring the play to life, they had to make a Rickshaw for
the actors to use. At first, the Rickshaw is just a bunch of pieces,
but when actors held up the pieces while moving it, you could see the
rickshaw, and I thought that was a great idea. There was even live music
for the play!

After the play, I got to meet the author of Rickshaw Girl,
Mitali Perkins, to interview her. Her favorite part to write in Rickshaw
Girl was when Naima's dad says "its a good thing you turned out to be a
girl." She liked that part because she had two older sisters and
everyone cried because she wasn't a boy and now her parents say that to
her. She was inspired to write the book because of the Rickshaws she saw
and she also learned how it was hard for girls to make money in
Bangladesh. She thought it would be a great idea to show in her book how
it is changing now. Besides Rickshaw Girl, Mitali wrote 9 other books!
She is also working on a novel and a picture book. Mitali is local to Bay Area in Orinda. Rickshaw Girl is not yet popular in Bangladesh yet.
The book is not translated yet, either. Mitali started writing books
because she loved reading and she wanted to write books for other people
to enjoy just like she enjoyed reading. She set the story in Bangladesh
because that was where her parents were born. She likes art a lot. Her
favorite tool to draw with is colored pencils. She especially likes to
draw alpanas because they are really simple and easy. It was great
getting to meet Mitali and it was really great getting to interview her.

Author Mitali Perkins (L) with BACT Blogger Julietta (R)

---

Rickshaw Girl continues for one more weekend at the Children's Creativity Museum Theater before heading to the Osher Studio in Berkeley. Purchase your tickets today!